Jeremiah 3:11 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And the Lord said unto me, &c. The case of these sister kingdoms is here compared, and judgment given upon the comparison. Israel hath justified herself more than Judah Hebrew, צדקה נפשׁה, hath justified her soul: so the LXX. εδικαιωσε την ψυχην, and the Vulgate. The meaning is, that of the two, Judah was the more guilty, because, though Israel's sins were more numerous, and their idolatry had continued longer, yet in Judah that and other sins were more heinous, because Judah had sinned against greater light, and would not take warning by that desolation which God had brought upon the whole kingdom of Israel. Observe, reader, this comparative justification stood Israel in little stead. It will little avail us to say we are not so bad as others, when yet we are not really good ourselves. And God's judgments upon others, if they be not the means of our reformation, will help to aggravate our destruction. The Prophet Ezekiel makes the same comparison between Jerusalem and Samaria, that Jeremiah here makes between Judah and Israel, nay, and between Jerusalem and Sodom, and Jerusalem is represented as being the worst of the three. See Ezekiel 23:11; and Ezekiel 16:48.